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30 April 2026 · 9 min read · 0
Naspers: Because Apparently Owning Tencent Wasn’t Complicated Enough
Naspers Ltd. remains one of the strangest “local” JSE investments: a South African-listed stock whose value is still heavily tied to Tencent, while management is trying very hard to convince the market it is no longer just a Tencent wrapper wearing an ecommerce hoodie. The latest HY2026 results show real progress: revenue growth, higher ecommerce profitability, strong free cash flow, continued buybacks, and a more aggressive “AI-first lifestyle ecommerce ecosystem” strategy. For a high-risk, high-reward investor, NPN is interesting because the market is being asked to re-rate Naspers from “discounted holding company” to “global tech operator.” That is a big ask—but the numbers are finally less embarrassing. Assumption: the quoted “R 88 841,00” appears to be the JSE-style quote in cents, meaning roughly R888.41 per share, especially after the 5-for-1 share split completed in October 2025. Naspers states that the split affected per-share metrics and that current and comparative numbers were adjusted accordingly.
Financial Performance Overview
Continuing revenue increased to US$4.117bn in HY2026, up from US$3.443bn in HY2025, representing about 20% reported growth. Management attributes this mainly to iFood in Latin America, OLX in Europe, and PayU in India.
Operating profit improved to US$178m, compared with US$107m in the prior period. That is not “moonshot tech company” profit yet, but it is a meaningful step away from the old Naspers habit of asking investors to admire adjusted metrics while IFRS politely coughs in the corner.
Ecommerce aEBITDA rose to US$557m, up from US$326m, a sharp improvement that suggests the ecommerce portfolio is no longer just a collection of expensive growth experiments. Ecommerce aEBIT also increased to US$396m, up more than 100% on a reported basis.
Group aEBITDA almost doubled to US$433m, compared with US$221m in HY2025, while group aEBIT jumped to US$223m from only US$35m. This is one of the strongest signs that cost discipline and portfolio maturity are starting to show up in actual group-level profitability.
Core headline earnings increased to US$1.710bn, up from US$1.508bn, while core headline earnings per N ordinary share rose to 215 US cents, compared with 173 US cents. On total operations, core HEPS rose to 214 US cents from 172 US cents.
Free cash flow increased to US$1.275bn, up from US$854m. Excluding the Tencent dividend, free cash flow improved from a US$147m outflow to a US$38m inflow, which is important because it shows the non-Tencent businesses are starting to pull their own weight—barely, but finally.
Tencent still matters enormously. Profit from equity-accounted results increased to US$3.2bn from US$2.5bn, mainly due to Tencent’s higher profitability. Naspers/Prosus trimmed the Tencent position by 1%, generating a US$3.3bn gain, and retained a 22.8% Tencent interest at 30 September 2025.
The balance sheet remains powerful. Naspers reported US$20.4bn cash on hand, including short-term investments, and US$2.7bn net cash including interest-bearing loans and lease liabilities. After committed payments for La Centrale and the Just Eat Takeaway transaction, cash on hand was expected to be around US$13.3bn.
Buybacks remain central to the investment case. Since June 2022, the Prosus/Naspers repurchase programme has returned over US$41bn of value, reduced the Prosus free-float share count by 30%, and narrowed the combined holding-company discount by 25 percentage points. As of 30 September 2025, Naspers had sold 344.9m Prosus shares and repurchased 60.7m Naspers N shares, totalling US$11.5bn.
MD&A Insights - Expanded
Management is trying to change the story from holding-company discount to operating-company execution. The group says it has shifted from a financial holding company into a global tech operating company focused on regional ecommerce ecosystems across Latin America, Europe, and India. That matters because the stock’s historic problem was not simply asset quality—it was structure, discount, complexity, and investor frustration.
The ecommerce strategy is now the centrepiece. Naspers says its ecosystem model serves approximately 2 billion consumers worldwide and spans nearly 100 companies. Management’s three-year plan is ambitious: at the Prosus level, it wants to at least double ecommerce revenue and triple ecommerce aEBITDA. This is bold, possibly brilliant, and also exactly the kind of target that can look heroic in presentations and cruel in execution.
Latin America is the most advanced ecosystem. Naspers describes its LatAm platform as built around iFood, iFood Pago, Despegar, OLX and Sympla, serving over 100 million customers. The goal is cross-platform engagement: food delivery, payments, travel, classifieds and events feeding each other rather than operating like unrelated apps in a corporate junk drawer.
iFood remains one of the cleanest operational wins. In HY2026, iFood revenue grew 35% in local currency excluding M&A, helped by core food delivery and Pago fintech growth. iFood aEBITDA increased from US$117m to US$184m, while aEBIT rose 76% in local currency excluding M&A to US$164m. This is important because profitable food delivery is rare enough that investors should maybe frame it, cautiously.
Despegar adds travel exposure and ecosystem optionality. Prosus completed the Despegar acquisition in May 2025. Despegar orders increased 35%, gross bookings rose 30%, revenue grew 13% year over year, and it contributed US$302m of revenue in 1H26. Its aEBITDA was US$38m, with a 13% margin. Early integration with iFood is already producing cross-referral benefits, with iFood referrals accounting for around 3% of Despegar’s B2C Brazil revenue in September.
Europe is the next big swing. The European portfolio includes Just Eat Takeaway.com, OLX, eMAG and iyzico. Management wants to use AI, customer segmentation, data-driven product improvements and operational efficiencies to reinvigorate growth—especially at JET, which was acquired after a painful public-market derating. The upside is real; the integration risk is also very real.
OLX is currently the standout European asset. OLX revenue rose to US$473m, up from US$389m, representing 22% reported growth. aEBITDA increased 52% to US$231m, and margin expanded by 10 percentage points to 49%. OLX’s aEBIT reached US$205m, up 59%. This is exactly the type of high-margin, marketplace-style business that can justify a better multiple if management does not overcomplicate it.
OLX growth categories are becoming more monetizable. Motors, real estate and jobs now represent 70% of OLX revenue. Motors revenue grew 27% to US$191m with 60% aEBITDA margins, while real estate revenue grew 26% to US$92m with 45% aEBITDA margins. These are serious margins, not “trust us, scale is coming in 2037” margins.
AI is not just sprinkled into the report for market perfume. Naspers repeatedly frames its strategy as AI-first. At OLX, GenAI-powered posting forms and app migration improved engagement and user experience in real estate. Tencent is also expanding AI across Hunyuan, Weixin, game production, marketing and enterprise AI services. Whether this becomes durable competitive advantage or just expensive table stakes is still the question.
Tencent remains both the crown jewel and the concentration problem. Tencent revenue growth was supported by games, fintech/business services, marketing services and AI-related services, while Weixin/WeChat reached 1.41bn monthly active users. For Naspers shareholders, Tencent is still the engine, the safety net and the reason the market keeps applying a discount with a suspicious eyebrow.
Swiggy is high-growth but loss-making. Swiggy’s customer base grew 35% to 21.6m, gross order value rose 43%, and Instamart GOV more than doubled by 105%. But adjusted EBITDA losses widened to US$178m from US$85m, mainly because quick commerce is apparently where capital goes to test its pain tolerance. Prosus held 25% of Swiggy at period-end.
Capital allocation is active and aggressive. During HY2026, the group invested US$2.0bn through M&A, including Despegar, and later closed La Centrale and Just Eat Takeaway.com. It also divested non-strategic assets including Udemy, parts of Remitly, and Meituan shares, with divestiture proceeds of US$1.2bn through September and subsequently through November. Management expects around US$2bn of divestments in FY2026.
The JET acquisition is the big integration test. Prosus closed the Just Eat Takeaway.com acquisition for approximately €4.2bn / US$4.9bn, including additional settlement arrangements, and settled convertible bonds for €788m / US$925m. This can create a stronger European ecosystem—or become a very expensive reminder that food delivery consolidation is not the same thing as value creation.
Management guidance remains confident. Naspers expects to achieve FY2026 Prosus-level ecommerce revenue of US$7.3bn to US$7.5bn and ecommerce aEBITDA of US$1.1bn to US$1.2bn, excluding JET. That guidance is the key benchmark: if they hit it, the market may reward them; if they miss it, the “trust us, we’re operators now” narrative weakens quickly.
Industry and Market Context
Naspers sits at the intersection of global internet investing, ecommerce, food delivery, fintech, online classifieds, travel, and AI-enabled consumer platforms. That is exciting, but it also means the company is exposed to almost every modern tech-investor headache: competition, regulation, FX volatility, integration risk, consumer spending cycles, AI capex pressure, and China exposure through Tencent. The attractive part is that several of Naspers’ markets—Latin America, India and parts of Europe—still have structural room for digital penetration, payments growth, online marketplaces and app-based ecosystems. The less attractive part is that everyone else knows this too, and many competitors are happy to burn capital for market share. Naspers is trying to win by combining regional platforms, cross-selling, AI-driven efficiency and capital discipline. That is a credible strategy, but not a low-risk one.
Valuation and Stock Performance
At the supplied price of 88,841 cents / approximately R888.41 per share, Naspers is not a simple P/E story. Based on HY2026 continuing EPS of 301 US cents and total EPS of 299 US cents, annualizing earnings mechanically would imply roughly US$6.00 per share, but that figure includes large Tencent-related and disposal-driven effects, so it should not be treated like clean recurring earnings. The better valuation lens is still sum-of-the-parts: Tencent stake, Prosus ownership, ecommerce portfolio, cash, debt, and the holding-company discount. The bull case is that continued buybacks, improving ecommerce profitability, and clearer segment reporting keep narrowing the discount. The bear case is that the market continues to say, “Nice spreadsheet, but we’ve seen this movie,” and keeps applying a conglomerate penalty. The 5-for-1 split also means older per-share comparisons need care, since Naspers adjusted its per-share numbers for comparability.
Risks and Opportunities
The biggest opportunity is multiple expansion. If investors begin valuing Naspers as a profitable global ecommerce operator rather than a discounted Tencent holding structure, the upside could be substantial. The second opportunity is operating leverage: OLX, iFood and other platforms are showing that revenue growth can drop into margins when the businesses mature. The third is buyback accretion; the repurchase programme has already narrowed the discount and increased NAV per share. But the risks are large. Tencent concentration remains material, China regulatory/political risk never fully goes away, and the group still relies heavily on Tencent dividends and stake sales to fund buybacks. The acquisition spree—Despegar, La Centrale, JET—adds execution risk. Swiggy and quick commerce show that growth can still come with widening losses. FX is another headache, with Naspers reporting US$479m of other finance costs in HY2026, mainly from unrealised FX losses on euro-denominated bonds.
Conclusion and Investment Recommendation
For a high-risk, high-reward investor, Naspers is a speculative Buy / high-conviction Hold, depending on whether the investor already owns it. The financial direction is genuinely improving: ecommerce revenue is growing, aEBITDA is scaling, free cash flow is stronger, OLX and iFood look increasingly valuable, and management is actively attacking the holding-company discount through buybacks and portfolio simplification. However, this is not a clean, sleepy compounder. It is a Tencent-linked, multi-region, acquisition-heavy, FX-sensitive tech conglomerate trying to reinvent itself as an AI-powered ecommerce operator. That could work beautifully—or become a very expensive management PowerPoint with better fonts. For investors comfortable with volatility, complexity and emerging-market/global-tech risk, NPN deserves a place on the watchlist and possibly in the portfolio. For conservative investors, the structure is still too messy. My view: Buy gradually on weakness, avoid chasing rallies, and judge management brutally against FY2026 ecommerce revenue and aEBITDA guidance.